Red cabbage salad

Happy New Year to you, I am starting with a winter recipe, but at the same time looking forward to spring. The traditional red cabbage recipe is the heated one with several good ingredients, slowly simmering in the pot which I learned when I was an apprentice in a hotel in Freiburg, a long time ago.
We put pig lard, apple sauce, cloves, red wine for good taste.
The worst, I ever tasted, was in a restaurant in France, Alsatia. I never thought that you could eat so bad in France. It was simply cooked in water with some salt added - let's say the way English hoseholds cooked vegetables 20 or 30 years ago - and already the cabbage smell would nearly keep you from trying it. Worse even, we decided to eat Cordon Bleu - being in France and presuming that it would be good. Worst decision ever! I don't remember the little town and the name of the place.. They took some kind of cooked meat, I think it was not even calf, filled it with cheese and ham, put some grated bread on it and then fried it. That is exactly how it tasted. Usually, I should have just given it back, but I took it home and the dogs were quite satisfied..
Never mind anyway, this is really good and also for all vegetarians and vegans, no meat involved:
Cut red cabbage in really thin stripes, add pomegranate seeds and pear or apple sauce (homemade of course), raspberry vinegar and olive oil. Marinate for at least two hours. Add roasted nuts before serving.

Ice Cream - fast, vegan, without sugar

Incredible, isn't it? Do you think - well, the title might me true, but that sounds too healthy to taste also good. And I tell you - it is fantastic.
Only downside is, this has to be produced and eaten - no freezing afterwards, no waiting too long because it melts. So get going:

Get the real ripe bananas - you know, the ones you don't want to eat anymore - they may also be already quite brown outside. This adds taste and a lot of sweetness.
Cut them in small slices (some also write to peel them first, but I hope the people who are reading this, don't have to be told that) and put them in the freezer overnight.
The next day you take the bananas, put them in the blender, frozen as they are.
You might add a little plant milk or water or juice, just don't exaggerate, otherwise it will be too liquid and also other fruit of your choice or a spoonful of cocoa (this makes a fantastic chocolate ice cream) or vanilla.

What? That's it? YES - go ahead. I am looking forward to your comments.

Granola

Been to DM - our local drugstore which also offers a lot of organic and vegan options at a very reasonable price. I saw that they had granola, a kind of roasted oats flakes and nuts combination. However the price with over 4 Euro seemed a bit too much. Oat flakes are really cheap and making granola yourself you know what's in it and choose your kind of nut combination. Apart from that, many cereal mixes contain lots of sugar and this is why I generally make my own muesli at home. The roasted version, however, seemed interesting and I remembered that I had eaten something like this in Costa Rica and liked it very much. They took ages to make it, I must say, but it was very good and abundant.
Here is the pic:

My first try, I put: oat flakes, cashews, brazil nuts and almonds - and also flax seed. Let's say, that the flax seed got a bit too roasted, due to their small size in proportion to the other stuff. It was still good, though, just a reminder to put them at the very end of the roasting process, or any other very small stuff.
You can make the granola with any kind of nuts or seeds and then add your choice of milk or plant beverage, lemon peel, coconut pieces, any other fruit.
I read, that it is really popular in America and that there are even salty versions with vegetables. Doesn't sound bad to me, you can always use it also as a salad topping. Will report about that, when the time has come. In the meantime, here is my sketchipe:

Strawberry Parfait

I admit, this isn't the season anymore, but I forgot to post this one. However, take fruit of the season, right now we still have apricots, peaches, melons, blackberries and pears. I will be trying something with the pear glut we have at the moment, this is to come and will be an experiment on the salty side because actually we don't eat all this sweet stuff..
The sketch recipe is in German again because it also served for another purpose, but this is the good thing about sketchipes, they are mostly understandable without translation, easier to remember and fun to make.
I am still experimenting with different styles and pencils. The colors are made with Derwent Intense pencils. They can be used just like normal pencils or diluted with water like watercolors (only once however, once you did this, they remain like this but you can layer with other colors).
So: blend 500 g of strawberries (or any fruit you like), add 2 spoons of lemon juice, 100 g of sugar and the yolk of two eggs, one package of vanilla sugar until creamy. Then add the 250 ml of whipped cream carefully and fill it in parfait forms (coffee or tea cups will do also).
Freeze for at least three hours. Nice dessert for friends which doesn't take too long to make and can be made in many different ways.

Swordfish with capers

Mostly plants, but sometimes fish is also a healthy option. Still going on with sketchnote studies, so you will have to accompany me on my trip in this new experience and hopefully see me improve. If somebody reads this, let me know your opinion. So this is also an occasion to learn German.

Let me write down the ingredients:

500 g swordfish (Schwertfisch), 

50 g capers (Kapern), olive oil (Olivenöl), 1 onion (Zwiebel), 3-4 garlic cloves (Knoblauchzehen), 2-3 fresh tomatoes (Tomaten), 1 chili, salt (Salz)

cut into small pieces, and soften in the pan, add the pieces of swordfish and some white wine and water until ready.

Battered apple cakes

Let me present you a Swabian recipe this time. In fact, a friend asked me for it and I nearly forgot about them. This was one of my childhood's favorite dishes, perfect accompanied by vanilla sauce (recipe to come yet) but also good just alone or with vanilla ice cream.

Flour 90 g, sugar 25 g, 1 egg, 75 ml milk, 1 bit of salt - this makes the dough, Then slice the apples and take away the middle piece, dip them into the dough and fry them in the hot oil. In the end turn them around in the sugar and cinnamon mix and enjoy!

Vegan Raspberry-Chocolate-Muffins

Here we go, some yummy vegan muffins with one of the best combination of ingredients: dark chocolate and raspberries. Why not make a vegan cake once in a while, it really tastes just as good as a cake made in the classic way but you don't need eggs, milk, cream, butter etc.. You don't even need plant drinks like almond or soy milk and can replace it with water instead.

Sketchnote recipe is in German again, but should be understandable:

Ingredients:

225 g sugar, 300 g flour, 150 ml oil,  1 pinch of salt, 250 g of plant milk or water, 3 tea spoons baking powder, 4 spoons cocoa, if you wish you can add a bit of dark chocolate as well, I did because it adds this great surprise in the middle of the muffin. 

Mix everything apart from raspberries and chocolate. Fill the muffin tray with one third of the mix, then add raspberries and chocolate pieces, fill up with the rest of the good stuff. Put in the oven for about 20 minutes, temperature 180 Celsius.

Enjoy!

I brought these to one of our dog sports encounters where they asked all the members if they could contribute some kind of cake.

When I brought it, I said "these are vegan, but you don't have to write it"- "Oh no, we have to write it, there are people who don't want vegan" ??

I couldn't believe it but actually I was a witness to this situation.

"I take from these muffins."

"They are vegan!!"

"Oh alright, then I won't take them."

I wonder what freaks people out about this, it is not like "there are nuts" and you might be allergic, there aren't any soy products in it. Somebody told me, that they are afraid that the taste won't be good, but trust me, they are great in flavor!

New ideas - doodles for recipes

Everybody is taking pictures of what they are eating or cooking nowadays - don't you think? This is why I am returning to a more old school and creative way and discovered sketch note recipes by different authors in the net. Right now I am still learning - I found a great doodle course for beginners from Adam Sicinski. Please drop by and have a look, it is awesome. At the same time I am still trying out different pencils and drawing techniques. It is such a great way of relaxing and creating something at the same time. So here is my sketch note recipe for a plant-based potato-lentil-soup.
Vegan, soy-free, gluten-free, low fat and healthy. Great to prepare ahead and freeze. I like to add some fresh herbs before eating like parsley, coriander or chives.
Recipe is in German, but I think it is quite understandable.
The basis is a vegetarian broth made of onions, garlic and as much vegetable as you can find - I put my leftovers and cut offs always in one of the drawers in the freezer and make a big pot when it is overflowing.
Then you just have to add a part of potatoes and red lentils, cook for about 15-20 minutes and then blend everything. Add salt, horseradish and other spices and enjoy.

Coconut rice

Leftovers - always inspiring for new dishes. So I want to recommend another podcast  (A taste of the past) that I listened to. No recipe from there but it reminded me that we had fantastic savoury coconut rice in the Caribbean part of Costa Rica. So I wanted to try that out. There were a couple of large coconut pieces left, some of the white and red rice, I paired with Zaalouk the day before and some frozen and cooked squid pieces I had from am meal some time ago.
Ingredients:
Olive oil
1-2 gloves of garlic
1 large onion
chili to taste
coconut
cilantro

Make your base with olive oil, garlic, onion and chili, add coconut, rice and squid - add water or something else like juice or wine - I added water and a touch of gin which provides an interesting counter point to the coconut. Rum would be great as well

Zaalouk

Hello again, some new input for cooking - finally. I have discovered a new podcast which is about cooking - like the format because it is very entertaining, with good tips and various stuff, paleo, vegan, ketogenic - hadn't even heard this last one before.
So I got inspired by the recipe for Zaalouk, a Moroccon recipe. As I heard in the podcast, these are the ingredients: Garlic, shallots, olive oil, eggplant, diced tomatoes - very ripe or canned -, salt,
turmeric, cumin, paprika, black pepper, cilantro and parsley.
More or less it went like this:
make your base with olive oil, minced garlic and diced shallots, add diced eggplant and let it simmer with a medium low temperature. - It takes some patience because the eggplant needs time to take up the oil and get cooked, maybe even 30 minutes, add the rest and let it simmer for another 10 minutes. With a fork, mash the whole mixture up, so there will still be texture but not large pieces of eggplant
Since I still have frozen eggplant here which I brought from Italy, I took up the idea at once.
Here is what I did:
1 onion
1 cup of wild garlic
olive oil
1 eggplant
1 can of italian cherry tomatoes
turmeric
cumin
chili powder
cilantro
parsley

Zaalouk with home made spelt flour bread and white and red rice with avocado

I was a bit disappointed because it somehow seemed to bland for me, I would have thought that it is more interesting - and I am not talking about spiciness from the chili. Maybe it was the absence of garlic and the wild garlic wasn't strong enough in taste or just not enough, who knows.
So the next day, I cooked it some more, with a little water added, lots more of turmeric and cinnamon. I mashed it some more with a food processor and added a generous sprinkle of lemon.
Next time I would even add more of these spices, maybe roast the cumin in a pan first. However, it is a great vegan  and gluten-free dish to eat with some rice or couscous or use it as a spread on some toasted bread.
For the whole procedure, why don't you listen to this podcast. It is called harvest eating and really worth listening to.

Stew season again

Fall is the right time for soul food like stews. Still with lots of vegetables..
This time I mixed chick peas, fennel and cauliflower.
Start with a large pot and roast onions and garlic in olive oil (like always), add carrots, leek and celery in dices until they have a roasty aroma.
If you wish to add some meat, this is the right time to do so, possibly two or three different kinds of it, otherwise the vegan version is perfectly fine, too.
Fill up with water and add chilies to taste. 
I cooked all the other ingredients separately. It is a little more effort and more to clean up, but this way you have better control of the cooking times and maybe you want to do a different combination next time.
This is what I added to the mix:
Cauliflower, cooked in salt water, about 10 minutes
Chick peas which were soaked in cold water for 24 hours, cooking time about 30 minutes
Pearl barley, about 30 minutes in salt water
Fennel and scallions, diced small, about 10 minutes

In the end, add as much of everything as you like and keep up all your options for different combinations - don't forget: sprinkle with lots of chopped parsley and some grated Pecorino cheese

Carbonara is easy to make

Spaghetti Carbonara - or in this case Bavette Carbonara is one of those dishes you can throw together in 15 minutes when you arrive home late or don't have much time to cook. Always better to cook yourself than to get some processed convenience food from the supermarket.
The original Carbonara was made with "guanciale - pork cheek", salt, pepper, eggs and pecorino cheese - so no cream is added!!
This is my variety - since I don't always have pork cheek at home, I added diced smoke-dried meat to a small diced onion in a spoonful of olive oil. Roast slowly while waiting for the pasta water to boil. When the pasta is ready, add it directly to the mix in the pan and add two or three eggs directly. Stir the whole mix until the eggs are mixed up with the rest and serve with lots of chopped parsley.

Clementine jelly

I have been to Italy, recently, and brought loads of vegetable and fruit. Sometimes it is easy to exaggerate when you see all the good aromatic stuff, unfortunately in Germany there is much less sun and much more rain. So I had a whole box of clementines which were going to rot (of course also not treated, so they won't last in eternity like those from the supermarket - which is a good sign, of course). Last year - and also this year - I made quince jelly which was great to eat on toast or also with a spicy cheese. So this time it will be clementine jelly:
Ingredients:
clementines non treated
jam sugar

Squeeze the clementines and add peel to taste if you like the more bitter variety, the jam sugar indicates the proportion of sugar and juice. I prefer to add less sugar so I usually take the 2:1 version, 2 parts juice, 1 part sugar.
Be sure to have your jars ready, sterilized in hot water.
Boil the juice with the sugar in a pot and stir for about 10 minutes. Then fill them in the jars directly and put the jars on top for about 10 minutes.
Done - great gift also to bring along for friends and family.

Squash and lamb's lettuce

Now there is fall again - squash season. I like to use hokkaido because you don't have to cut off the peel but prefer the taste of butternut.
The important thing about squash is to add flavors - especially spicy ones - otherwise it is too bland for my taste.
Lamb's lettuce is a typical salad of fall season and it has a great earthy taste.  I only buy the German one because the French lettuce is planted in sandy ground and you can even wash it ten times and there will still be that grain of sand which you feel between your teeth at a certain point - a really nasty taste!

For the dressing I roasted red onions cut in dices, adding a spoonful of water and a teaspoon full of raspberry vinegar, give the dressing over the salad when it is still warm, add a sprinkle of lemon and a spoon full of olive oil.

The squash was cut into pieces, adding a chili and some sea salt, roasting it slowly in a pan, adding a little bit of water or white wine.

That's it.

Calf cheek with red Camargue rice, buckwheat, carrots and hokkaido

I am reading lots of vegan blogs and recipes right now. Some time ago it seemed to me that vegan was all about imitating meat and sausages with other ingredients like soja. I still have this memory of school. When we went on our school trip for one week in the north of Germany to an old farm house where we cooked ourselves, one of our teachers was a vegetarian so we had very little meat  we brought along - which didn't really disturb me. However we had some kind of fake meat made of soja which had such a terrible taste (not like meat and not like vegetable but like licorice - really nasty) that I couldn't really understand the idea of eating badly imitated meat products.
Now vegans have really understood how important it is to cook yourself using all the great ingredients which are offered from nature.
I really got great ideas from some of those blogs:
I tried chia pudding which has become one of my favorites, I tried buckwheat and am absolutely flashed by it's taste. Amaranth has been a bit of a delusion until now. I tried to pop it, didn't work out, and somehow these grains are really really tiny. Maybe I will rather stay with quinoa.
More experiments to come.

I still had red Camargue rice which is really good but takes an awful long time to cook, about 40 minutes. Separately I cooked some buckwheat for about 15 minutes. Both together, topped with some roasted cashews have a wonderful nutty taste, you don't even need onions or garlic with it.
Vegetables were roasted carots and hokkaido pumpkin, made in the oven just topped with salt and some pumpkin seed oil.

The meat - veal cheeks - were made like this:
Cut dices of onions, carots, parsley roots, celery and roast altogether in a large pot, add some slices of garlic and wild garlic. After 10 minutes add the calf cheeks and braise until they have a nice dark color on all sides, then slice them up in pieces thick about 1 finger, add tomato juice and wine to taste and continue until the meat is done.

Black lentil salad

Black lentils are great and have an excellent taste. I ate them for the first time at a festivity in a restaurant. 

I don't know their recipe, I like to combine different tastes, in this case spicy, sweet and sour.

Ingredients:

Black lentils - amount depends on your plans, for a starter calculate about 50 g per person, I added chilies, grated orange peel, wild garlic leaves and salt.

Don't cook them in too much water, they will loose their beautiful black color. Instead make a little "soffrito"and add water slowly until they are cooked as you like them. Then add your other ingedients.

Nearly vegan curry

I still have been cooking but not posting about it - a first this year. I hope I can go back to blogging about food again. I was very busy with our B-Litter and with our other three giants among whom there are two quite stubborn teenagers who need a lot of training and discipline.

I have been to an Indian restaurant these days and got a great curry. Very nice, go visit them when you are in the region.  It is called Suriya and is situated in Ludwigsburg, South Germany. We forgot to tell them precisely if we wanted mild, hot or very hot.. So we got the mild version. I said then that I would have liked to have some spice and got an extra sauce for conditioning. They didn't fail to tell me to be very cautious because it is extremely hot. In fact it was but mixing I got just the right taste.
So I wanted to try make a curry myself. Actually, reading all over the internet, there are so many recipes that it is difficult to choose.

This is where I got the basic idea:

Suggested/ what I made:
2 table spoons of peanut butter / ok
15 g butter/ had none put none
1 large onion, diced/ ok
1 table spoon of fresh sliced ginger/ had none, will put it next time however
2 table spoons of sliced garlic/ put one garlic clove, should be enough
1 tea spoon of cinnamon/ ok
1 tea spoon of black pepper/ actually I forgot it, but I prefer chili
2 table spoons of ground coriander/ ok
2 table spoons of cumin/ ok
1/4 tea spoon of turmeric/ ok
2 tomatoes/ had only cherry tomatoes but leftover tomato juice, about 1/4 liter
1 tea spoon of cayenne/ dried chilis
2 red chilis without seeds/ more dried chilis
2-4 table spoons of fresh coriander herbs/ I put only 1 tea spoon. In my opinion too much coriander herbs can destroy a whole dish. Got once an otherwise great ceviche in Costa Rica which was so full of it that it was really a pity for the taste of the fresh fish.
110 g yogurt/ I put 150 g of yogurt
680 ml water/ since I put tomato juice I didn't add any water

Next time I will add the ginger, roast the spices in a pan before adding them and make lots more of this curry, so I can freeze it for next time.

The curry sauce goes well with this combination: sliced avocado - avocado is always good - roasted banana and mango, whole grain rice with chick peas and yogurt with sunflower and pumpkin seeds.
Yogurt seems to be served quite often as a side with Indian dishes and it seems it is to take away the hot feeling of the chilis and cayenne, works really good!
If you use a dairy-free yogurt for the sauce and side dish you have a vegan, yummy and nutrient meal!
For my restart I want to add a nice youtube music video which goes well with the dishes every time now. So India - there must be lots of different kinds of music but I am not really into them.
This one  is from an older movie, very nice scenes and dance, music starts around 4.00

End of quince season - quince jelly

I still had a couple of quinces in the kitchen. They have such a great scent but in the end they have to be used up as well. So I decided to make quince jelly. Really easy peasy. First jelly in my life but one of the easiest things to do, I took the recipe from "Essen und Trinken" - a really great source for recipes.

Cut the quinces up in pieces, leave the peel on, just take off the stem. Put them at once in a bowl of water with lemon juice, so they will keep their color (more or less.)  Cook in water until soft - about 30-40 minutes. Then use a linen cloth or kitchen towel as a strainer and let the juice drop off. Add a little bit of orange or lemon juice to taste. Then I added the special canning sugar which contains pectine in order to make the liquid become jelly - measure about 1:1. You can also use sugar and add the pectin so you need less sugar, I guess I will try this next time.
Stir in pot about 5 minutes then put at once in the before sterilized glass jars.
I made some of the jars with chili pieces. They went to the top. Next time I guess I will put whole chilis inside, also for the look of it. - Perfect side dish for goat cheese - sweet and spicy!

Roasted Oven Vegetable

Very simple recipe again. I wanted to try sweet potatoes and looked for others remainders in my fridge:

Parsil roots and carots.

Sprinkle with olive oil, a bit of salt and roast for about 30 minutes in the oven, 200 Celsius. Then another 10 minutes after putting on some rosemary to taste.

Great simple sauce for dipping:

Mayonnaise, 2 spoons of rum or cognac, orange or lemon grated to taste, salt

Enjoy!

Quince carpaccio

Now, in fall season, our quince tree left us with lots and lots of quinces. Some of them were given to others and with the rest we have to be creative. The classic recipe for quinces are jams and jellies but that isn't enought. I already made cakes with quinces and quince mustard (great together with goat cheese) and now I am trying quince carpaccio, quince vinaigrette and quince and pumpkin stew. Another interesting recipe was for quince punch - great for the cold fall days. I discovered that my dogs, which are great apple and pear eaters, also like raw quince, so that makes part of their diet, too. Although - actually we had two quince trees last year but the puppies peeled off the whole bark and the poor tree dried out and died.
Now for the quince carpaccio.
I grated one quince - it is important to sprinkle lemon or lime juice at once, otherwise the pieces won't keep their yellow color but go to a kind of ugly brown - and mix it. Then add some salt. I had a grapefruit in the fridge which I added, in the style of a vegetarian ceviche.  I must say, the aroma of quince and grapefruit combined perfectly and were a great side dish to the roasted prawns I made. -